Page 74 of Hide And Seek
Maren raised a skeptical brow. “That sounds good in theory, but do you actually know anything about the Martins and their weaknesses?” she asked. She paused and looked around. “Does anyone here even remember what they look like? Because honestly, all the parents start to look the same to me after a while. They just blur together.”
“Just look for the ones with the cheap shoes,” Sutton said. She aimed the snide comment at Noura in a whisper, but everyone heard it anyway.
“God, someone really needs to knock that bitch out,” Jasmine muttered, head shaking.
“Okay. Guys.” Caitlin pushed to her feet yet again, her voice cutting through the tension before it could spike any higher. “Look… we’re clearly not getting anywhere like this.”
No one argued.
Her gaze moved around the circle, lingering briefly on all of us in turn. “We’re all running on adrenaline, hardly any sleep, and… everything that just happened,” she said. “Rhys died less than an hour ago. So this is probably the worst possible time for us to be trying to have a calm, rational discussion about anything.”
A few people shifted in their seats. Someone exhaled shakily.
“So I think we need to take a break and let everyone cool off,” she went on. “Just step away from this for a bit.”
“And do what?” Jensen muttered, scrubbing a hand over his face.
“Anything that doesn’t involve us sitting around sniping at each other,” Caitlin said. “Read. Go lie down. Or we could grab a movie from the media library and put something on in here. Just something normal. Something that gives our brains a minute to reset.”
Silence hung for a beat as everyone considered her words.
“Then later,” she added, “we can figure out dinner. And after that, when we’ve all got full bellies, we’ll come back to this conversation. Hopefully by then we’ll be capable of talking without being at each other’s throats.”
Jasmine huffed quietly beside me, but she didn’t argue. Even Sutton didn’t snap back, though her arms were still folded tight across her chest.
“Yeah,” Garrett said, dragging a hand through his hair. “That sounds like a good idea.”
A few others nodded, murmuring their agreement. The tension didn’t disappear, but it loosened, just enough for people to start looking away from each other instead of squaring off.
“Wait.” Maren sat up straight again. “It’s almost half past two.”
Caitlin blinked. “And?”
“Hello? Brad and Olivia!” Maren threw her hands up. “They’re supposed to be back here with the cops by now! So where the hell are they?”
The room fell quiet again.
In the rush of everything that had just happened; the arguments, the accusations, Rhys’s death… Brad and Olivia had somehow slipped to the edges of all our minds.
But Maren was right. Wherewerethey? Where was the help we’d all been waiting for?
“Well…” Caitlin’s voice had lost some of its earlier steadiness. “Maybe they slept in this morning, so they’re still walking.Or maybe they made it and they’re still talking to the police. Explaining everything.”
“Yeah,” Garrett said quickly, like he needed it to be true. “They could show up any minute now. So we just need to stay calm.”
Grace, who’d been sitting unnaturally still, slowly shook her head.
“I have a really bad feeling about this,” she said. “Something’s happened to them. I know it.”
“Stop.” Sutton’s voice cut through the room. “They’re fine. They’ll be here any minute, like Garrett said.”
“No, they won’t!” Grace’s head snapped up, her eyes glassy now. Her voice wavered, then rose, cracking at the edges. “Do youreallybelieve they’re still walking? After all this time?”
Tamsin lifted a hand. “Grace, we’ve been over this. It’s nearly forty-five miles to Millhaven, so—”
“I know how far it is!” Grace snapped. Her hands came up, fingers tangling in her hair for a second before dropping again. “But the camp road is only twenty miles,” she went on. “They should’ve finished that yesterday. And once they hit Route 30, there would’ve been cars. There arealwayscars there. So they would’ve flagged someone down. Right?”
She looked around the circle, eyes wide.
